Hello, vectorrules!Vector is NOT a business,...and it's been around a long time (based on Slackware). I was sorry to see Mandriva's troubles, too....but looks like there is an attempt to keep it going,...as well as former devs starting the fork of "Magea"(however you spell that). Mandriva has always had very dramatic ups and downs (due to it's less than stellar business model) Vector is solid, however,...(rock solid distro, with a solid community).

I think it is. It does have some legal status as a corporation or whatever the Canadian equivalent is. I know VectorLinux is not a charity or a nonprofit. I don't think anyone is expecting to get rich through VL but I doubt Vec and other principals would say "no" to whatever revenue comes in through VectorLinux after the bills are paid.

If anyone knows otherwise, please enlighten us (if you care to). Needless to say, we users are not stockholders, so we're not entitled to know all the inside information.--GrannyGeek

and it's been around a long time (based on Slackware). I was sorry to see Mandriva's troubles, too....but looks like there is an attempt to keep it going,...as well as former devs starting the fork of "Magea"(however you spell that). Mandriva has always had very dramatic ups and downs (due to it's less than stellar business model) Vector is solid, however,...(rock solid distro, with a solid community).[/quote]

Please explain what you mean by Mandriva's demise. I did some searching and can't find anything saying Mandriva is going under. They have new releases coming up and there's no hint on their Web site that Mandriva's days are numbered.

I know Mandriva has had troubles in the past few years and I think they were in some kind of bankruptcy, but they came out of it. I also know they are reorganizing but will continue with commercial and community (free) releases. It's a model already followed by RedHat/Fedora and SuSE/OpenSuSE. Is something else happening?

Mandrake was the first Linux distro I tried way long ago. At the time it was considered the most newbie-friendly distro, but it wasn't friendly enough for me. I used it for a few months and finally gave up in frustration. Linux back then was much less complete, much less polished, and much harder to use than Linux is today. I was also a less competent user than I am today. Although I didn't stick with Mandrake or Mandriva (which I also tried after the name change), I'll always be grateful to Mandrake for making Linux something I couldn't let go of.--GrannyGeek

I used Mandriva in the past,...and quite liked it. But I haven't used it in awhile now,..so I can't really give any kind of a complete picture. But what I've been able to kind of see,...is that it is the ones who have bought "subscriptions" over the years for the Mandriva "PowerPack" that are speaking of "demise". It seems that they might very well be left without being able to get any kind of a refund (if they pre-paid). Also,..many of the main Mandriva devs have already left,..and some are in the group to start the new "fork" of "Mageia Linux" (a community-based linux derived from Mandriva,..or continuing Mandriva). Mandriva,...meanwhile,..has had to skip a release,...and seems to have a lot of new (if not mostly new) devs to start the next release. That's as far as my knowledge of the "inner-workings" go. I'm sure there are others who know far more about this than I do. It isn't going to be the same,...at least that seems to be certain.EDIT: I forgot to mention that the company (Mandriva SA) has been sold (it seems) to a Russian company recently. The company was alway notorious for NOT communicating with the users,......so I only got what tiny little bit of info that I have from their forum members,....(and trying to "google-translate" pages of French news on the web). So any and all news,....may or may NOT be factual. (LOL!)